Blame It on the Duke

by Lenora Bell

  Still no black stallion hurtling down the pier.

  Sailors moving, shouting, huge ropes being untied, anchors lifted.

  Alice dashed tears from her eyes.

  It was ridiculous to stand here and wait for something that would never happen.

  She lifted the lid of Kali’s basket. “I was rather hoping he might come after us, Kali,” she whispered.

  Kali stared at her indignantly, more than ready to be released from her wicker prison.

  Suddenly Alice glanced up, staring at the docks.

  They were receding from view.

  The ship had begun to move.

  And her final hope died.

  Her heart plummeting, Alice descended the ladder.

  First cabin to the left. She opened the door and stopped abruptly, her heart pounding.

  There was a man in her room.

  Lounging in the very center of the bed.

  Nick.

  He was reading a book. Not just any book. He was reading the novel she’d left behind.

  “What took you so long?” Nick grinned. “I’ve been waiting for ages. This is really quite a good book upon a second read. Though I don’t much like that Caroline Bingley. Bit of a witch. And that arrogant Darcy. Who does he think he is?”

  The sight of Nick lying in her bed had rendered her temporarily mute.

  He was so beautiful.

  And so unexpected.

  Her heart expanded like the sails of the ship catching in the wind.

  “Nick, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m one step ahead of you, Alice. For the very first time. And probably the last.”

  “How did you arrive before me?”

  “I rode Anvil. I told him I had to be early this time, instead of late.”

  “But . . .”

  “Lear somehow created that obstruction in the road so that your carriage would be delayed. I’ve no idea how he does these things, but he does. Worked like magic. Are you going to stand there gaping?”

  His eyes lost their teasing edge. “If you want me to leave I’d better go and tell Lear to turn this ship back, I believe we’ve already begun to move.”

  “But the duke . . .” Alice said. She seemed to only be able to manage sentence fragments. Very uncharacteristic of her.

  “He’s in the ship’s orchid conservatory, happily making an inventory of his new blooms. I was the one who was afraid to leave London, not my father. I clung to the idea that he needed Sunderland when really it was me who was too afraid to leave.”

  “This ship has an orchid conservatory?”

  “To store the orchids Lear will hunt for his wealthy investors.”

  “You don’t like ships. You said you’d never set foot on one again.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Come here and I’ll tell you, Dimples.” He patted the bed beside him. “We’ll talk this through in comfort.”

  Kali yowled in her basket, and Alice hastily set her down and opened the lid. Her cat hopped free of the basket in one leap and jumped onto the bed, flopping down beside Nick.

  Nick propped himself up on one elbow to scratch behind Kali’s ears.

  He wasn’t wearing a coat. Or a cravat.

  “Do you have breeches on under those covers?” Alice asked suspiciously.

  “Come and find out,” Nick said, with a wicked grin.

  Alice snorted. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  “Married beneath you. Now come here, Dimples. I have an apology to make.”

  Nick’s heart beat swiftly as he waited for Alice to say something . . . do something.

  Why did she just stand there, watching him? Why wasn’t she already in his arms?

  Maybe he hadn’t completely thought through the no-trousers thing. He wanted to go to her, take her in his arms, but he needed her to make this decision without any physical persuasion on his part.

  Alice closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, they shimmered with tears. “Nick,” she said, her voice faltering. “You can’t uproot your whole life to follow me across the globe.”

  “What life? I was living for empty pleasures, stumbling moment to moment. Living in fear.”

  “But what of the report for Parliament?”

  “Coleman’s behind bars and the Yellow House is in his son’s hands now. Patrick tells me the lad has a kind heart and has already made vast improvements.”

  “What of March and Bill and Berthold?”

  “My ragged band of misfit servants will be fine without me.”

  Finally, she walked toward the bed, a little unsteady on her feet because of the motion of the ship.

  When she was near enough he reached for her and tumbled her into the bed, sending an indignant Kali leaping away.

  Smoothing her hair away from her face, he gazed tenderly at his beautiful wife. “I’ve made many mistakes in my life, Alice, but the biggest mistake I ever made was allowing you to leave without telling you I loved you and begging you to take me with you on your wonderful adventure.”

  “Nick.” She closed her eyes. “You love me?”

  “More than anything, Dimples.”

  He kissed her eyelids. Then he kissed her dimples, because she was smiling.

  “I love how you plunge headlong into life with the belief that you can conquer anything. Speak any language. Translate any text. You’ve conquered me, Alice.”

  She opened her eyes and the clear, deep turquoise stopped his heart from beating.

  “I can’t tell you that you won’t go insane, Nick,” she whispered. “That you won’t forget my name or forget me entirely. No one can assure you of that.”

  “I know. And I can accept that now, if you can.”

  She nodded. “Yes, Nick. I will always love you. No matter what happens.”

  “All I can do is be here with you right now, Alice. Right here. We can create memories so vivid that they weave themselves into the fabric of the universe. Into the light of the stars. The memory of this moment. You holding me. The memory of our kisses.”

  He kissed her then with all his heart and soul.

  Because she wasn’t just any fever dream of a woman.

  She was Alice.

  His wife. His lover.

  His future.

  Epilogue

  Six months later . . .

  Calcutta, India

  “Here.” Nick pointed to a spot on the map spread before him on the table in the study of the house they’d rented on Council Street in Calcutta. “We’ll find the Cymbidium aloifolium blooming in the forests of the Himalayan foothills.”

  “Aloifolium. Does it resemble an aloe plant?” Alice asked.

  “It has elongated leaves which resemble aloe,” said Nick. “The Nepalese believe its roots cure paralysis and treat vertigo and insanity.”

  The duke glanced at his son, his gray eyes clear and focused. “I know this cymbidium, don’t I?”

  “We searched for it together once, you and I,” Nick said gently.

  Alice’s heart brimmed with pride as she watched father and son pore over the map.

  The months-long voyage had brought back painful memories for Nick, but he’d been writing in a diary, observing the duke and recording their conversations.

  For his part, Barrington was growing sharper and less confused every day. Hunting orchids was his favorite thing in life and it gave him a focus and purpose.

  “Will it be blooming in winter?” Captain Lear asked, scratching Kali’s head. She was cradled in the crook of one of his arms with her head nestled against his chest and her hind legs spread in a thoroughly unladylike manner.

  Nick nodded. “It’s a hardy plant adapted to mountain conditions. It’ll survive the voyage back to England.”

  Kali squirmed out of Lear’s arms and jumped on the table to sniff the map. She’d proven a fearless companion on the voyage, and the sailors aboard The Huntress had adopted her as their ship’s cat, even ma
king her a miniature berth and a tiny sailor’s cap to wear.

  Captain Lear pushed back his long black hair, which he’d allowed to grow unchecked on the voyage. “My investors will care only for the beauty of the blooms, not its medicinal properties, I’m afraid.”

  Nick drew Alice to him and wrapped an arm about her waist. “Oh, she’s a beauty, all right. Blooms in clusters on long, slender pendant stalks. Has small, perfect scarlet-and-cream petals with an hourglass mark in the center.”

  He gave Alice’s waist a squeeze when he said the word hourglass. Why did everything he say have to sound so very suggestive?

  Her heart skipped a beat recalling the wicked things she and Nick had done last night, and every sultry, languid night of the voyage. She was quite certain some of the things they’d done weren’t even described in the Kama Sutra.

  “It must be nearly time,” she said to Nick.

  They had an engagement today with the Sanskrit scholars from Fort William College. She was nervous about handing over her translation, even though she still intended to present it as Fred’s work.

  Outside, the air was warm and humid and filled with the fragrance of the coconuts, pineapples and oranges being hawked by street vendors.

  They didn’t need to take a carriage because Mr. Carey had suggested they meet at the nearby Government House, as the buildings housing the college were currently under renovation.

  “How strange to think that it’s December, and our friends in London are huddled in front of their fireplaces,” Alice said.

  “I never thought I’d leave England,” Nick said. “But now that I have . . . I’m not sure I want to go back.”

  Alice smiled at him. “India is everything I dreamt it would be.”

  A surfeit of new sights, smells, and sounds; a feast for her senses. Around the docks, Alice had caught snatches of German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and what she guessed had been Arabic and Chinese.

  She’d dreamt of traveling for so long, picturing all the languages she would hear, and the new sights she would see.

  But she’d never imagined the tall, handsome man walking next to her, carrying her valise filled with the ancient manuscripts she would donate to the college.

  A companion on her journey. Someone to share the wonder of each new discovery.

  Government House was an imposing, white colonnaded structure, built by Lord Wellesley in 1803 at great expense. The entrance on the north side had a handsome stone portico and Ionic white columns.

  “Are you ready for this, my love?” Nick asked as they mounted the steps.

  “I’m ready.” Ever since she’d saved her grandfather’s collection of manuscripts from the fire, she’d been ready for this moment. She knew returning them to India was the right thing to do.

  Mr. Carey and Mr. Vidyasagar met them in an inner room paved in dark gray marble with cut-glass chandeliers suspended from a blue and gold painted ceiling.

  “Lord Hatherly,” Mr. Carey said, bowing slightly, his spectacles sliding forward on his long nose. “I met your father many years ago.”

  “Then you’ll have to call upon us and say hello again.”

  “He’s here?” exclaimed Mr. Carey. “But I thought . . .” He squinted at Nick. “I thought he was . . .”

  “Mad?”

  “That is to say—”

  “He is mad,” Nick said calmly. “Mad as a March hare. But that doesn’t mean he should be locked away.”

  “Oh.” Mr. Carey cleared his throat. “Quite right, Lord Hatherly. I would enjoy speaking with him again.”

  “You have brought your grandfather’s manuscripts, Lady Hatherly?” asked Mr. Vidyasagar, his brown eyes gleaming with scholarly fervor.

  “I have. I’m only sorry my brother Fred couldn’t be here to present them himself.”

  “I should like to meet him someday,” said Mr. Vidyasagar. “The translation he sent us was an extraordinarily erudite example of scholarship for one with so little experience in the Sanskrit language.”

  Alice and Nick exchanged smiles. They’d sent the translation ahead by post. Alice was thrilled to hear the learned scholars approved.

  Mr. Vidyasagar never took his eyes off the valise. “May I?”

  Alice nodded and Mr. Vidyasagar immediately opened the latch on the valise. With great reverence and care, he lifted the silk-wrapped palm leaf manuscript and laid it on the dark wood of the table.

  “Can it be, Mr. Carey?” Mr. Vidyasagar addressed his colleague. “Can it truly be the long lost chapters from the Kama Sutra?

  He and Mr. Carey bent close to the manuscript, examining the script etched into the palm leaves.

  “Remarkable!” exclaimed Mr. Vidyasagar.

  “Extraordinary,” sighed Mr. Carey.

  “Then you think it’s authentic?” Alice asked eagerly.

  “I will need to perform some testing,” said Mr. Vidyasagar, “but my initial examination leads me to believe it is the original text.”

  “I concur,” said Mr. Carey, trailing a long, slender finger along the text. “I don’t suppose your brother told you anything of the subject matter of the work. And I’m certain he never allowed you to read his translation, Lady Hatherly.”

  Ha! Alice longed to reveal the truth, but she knew that that was not the prudent course of action. “Fred’s in Paris right now and sent me as his emissary, as I had always wanted to visit India. He told me nothing.”

  “Quite right. Quite right. But you, Lord Hatherly?”

  “Oh, I’ve read it. And I approve, gentlemen. I approve.”

  Mr. Carey peered at Nick over his spectacles. He didn’t appear to have a playful or salacious bone in his thin, creaky body. Alice rather suspected the man had parchment for skin and ink running through his veins.

  “Fred never allowed Lady Hatherly to read his translation, gentlemen,” Nick continued, “because he didn’t write it.”

  Alice stared at Nick. What was he doing?

  “And what do you mean by that, Lord Hatherly? Are you saying that Mr. Fred Tombs did not author the translation we received?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Nick, please,” Alice whispered urgently. “What are you doing?”

  Nick was going off script.

  Way off.

  “How remarkable,” exclaimed Mr. Vidyasagar. “Then who translated it?”

  “A Hatherly,” Nick said with a smug smile.

  Alice kicked his shin under the table.

  “Are you saying that you translated it, Lord Hatherly?” Mr. Carey asked.

  Nick completely ignored her frantic signals. “The erudite example of scholarship you praised earlier was produced by none other than my wife.”

  Mr. Vidyasagar’s jaw dropped, and Alice half-started out of her chair. “Nick—no!”

  This was not what they’d agreed upon.

  “Alice,” he whispered, “I’ll be damned if Fred, or I, take the credit for all of your hard work.”

  Mr. Carey stared over his spectacles. “Do you mean to tell me, Lord Hatherly, that Lady Hatherly translated this manuscript?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m telling you.” Nick leaned back in his seat.

  He obviously thought he was doing something noble but now her scholarship would be buried, passed over . . . her translation would never see the light of day.

  “Nick,” she said sternly, “may I have a word?”

  He blithely ignored her. “Old Fred and I, we don’t have a way with words. But Lady Hatherly here? Words are her bread and butter and foreign languages are her cup of tea.”

  “You’re having us on,” scoffed Mr. Carey.

  Alice’s shoulders stiffened, her ire centering on a new target. “You don’t think me capable of such a thing?”

  Nick grinned. “That’s right, you show them, darling.”

  The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. She may as well admit to it now.

  “Frankly, no,” replied Mr. Carey.

&nb
sp; Mr. Vidyasagar looked more circumspect. “Perhaps you helped your brother with the translation, Lady Hatherly? As his amanuensis?”

  Alice narrowed her eyes. They didn’t think she could read the text?

  She’d show them.

  She spread out one of the long, thin palm leaves. Drawing her finger across the etched black text, she began to read and she didn’t stop until both of the scholars were gaping at her with shocked expressions.

  Mr. Vidyasagar raised his thick, dark eyebrows. “Well, this does change things.”

  “My turn,” Nick said gleefully.

  Alice gave him a withering glance, but he spread out a new page. He made a show of peering closely, and hemming and hawing.

  “Ah, yes,” he said in a scholarly tone. “Scratch, scratch, squiggle. Flourish, little snake, big snake, big squiggle—”

  “Nick!” Alice suppressed a smile.

  “Well it’s all snakes and squiggles to me.”

  Mr. Carey stared down his long nose disapprovingly. “Why do I feel as though you two planned this little episode?”

  “I wasn’t planning to seek any credit,” said Alice. “The prurient content of the manuscript would bring scandal to my family if my connection were discovered.”

  “We will only publish for a select group of the Friends of India,” Mr. Vidyasagar said. “Your work could remain anonymous.”

  “Of course, we had no idea a female completed the translation. We’ll have to re-examine it,” said Mr. Carey, wiping his spectacles with a square of cloth and looking very uncomfortable about this turn of events.

  “Why should you re-examine it?” Nick asked.

  “Er, well . . . it throws a new light on everything,” Mr. Carey said. “The Kama Sutra was written by a man on the subject of desire. I hardly think an elegant lady would possess the vocabulary, much less the . . . inclination for describing some of the more . . . enthusiastic portions of the text.”

  Drat! “May I remind you, gentlemen,” Alice said, “that you have already pronounced my translation to be erudite. You can hardly consider it worthless now.”

  “You know, gentlemen,” Nick said. “My wife will be the Duchess of Barrington one day.”

  As if they hadn’t considered that fact, the two professors drew themselves up in their chairs.